Johannesburg - The EFF has come out with guns blazing against Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane, accusing her of destroying that office and saying it was working on a plan to remove her from office.
The EFF said it regretted its decision to back Mkhwebane for the job last year.
EFF leader Julius Malema said on Monday they should have listened when they were warned that Mkhwebane was planted by the ANC.
They had chosen to give her a chance, but the public protector’s actions seemed to confirm the accusations against her, he said.
The DA raised the issue of a spy when Mkhwebane was interviewed by Parliament last year, but Malema said they were giving her the benefit of the doubt.
On Monday, the public protector’s office refused to be drawn into the EFF’s or the DA’s allegations or views about the CIEX report, which has pointed out suspicions over Mkhwebane’s handling of the report into the South African Reserve Bank’s financial rescue of Bankorp during the apartheid era.
Malema said they were looking into plans to rescue the office of the public protector and remove Mkhwebane, adding that Mkhwebane had failed to defend the office of the public protector.
“We must stop calling her the public protector and start calling her the state protector,” Malema said.
He added that the EFF was waiting for the DA to take Mkhwebane to court to prove its suspicions.
He added that the EFF regretted supporting Mkhwebane’s appointment to the office in the first place and that it had taken a puppet from the Guptas’ kitchen and decided to give it a chance.
The EFF also said it re-
jected what it termed disingenuous political campaigns such as the “Absa Pay Back the Money” forum, which it said was a Gupta and state security-sponsored campaign aimed at saving the “kleptocratic status quo”.
Mkhwebane’s spokesperson Oupa Segalwe said they would not comment on the leaked report into Absa.
He said parties who felt aggrieved had until the end of February to comment on the report’s provisional findings.
Meanwhile, the Umkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans Association has called for a judicial commission of inquiry to be established.
Its chairperson Kebby Maphatsoe questioned why, at the dawn of democracy, an audit into the “fraudulent activities” of the loan was not being conducted.
“The wealth that made a few white families rich and buttressed white privilege was not just a case of excellent entrepreneurship.
“It was brazen fraud deliberately committed to impoverish the indigenous people while ensuring that white privilege endures,” he said.